Recent problems with `make bootstrap'.

From:

Luc Teirlinck

Subject:

Recent problems with `make bootstrap'.

Date:

Wed, 8 Dec 2004 22:19:34 -0600 (CST)

Due to a recent change in the bootstrapping process, bootstrapping no
longer fails, but proceeds as usual, if one of the manuals fails to
build, without any noticeable warning to the user. The Elisp manual
no longer builds, and the breaking of the build is deliberate. It is
trivial to fix. As a result, people are reading and checking an
outdated version of the manual and submitting bug reports and comments
about the outdated version.
Before, if a manual failed to build, it immediately got detected and
fixed in a matter of hours. Building manuals gets broken rather
frequently through all kinds of typos or stupid inadvertent omissions.
So the Emacs manual or info.texi could start failing to build and no
longer get updated at any time without anybody noticing.
This wastes the time of people who volunteer time to check the manuals
and seriously interferes with the checking of the manuals. This
apparent lack of concern for people's time is discouraging.
Why not revert Revision 1.299 to Makefile.in and get rid of these two
xref's pointing nowhere and quit wasting people's time? I have had to
do that in my private version of Emacs, since otherwise checking the
manuals would be hopeless.
I do not "morally disapprove" of xref's pointing nowhere, but I can
not see how they are an important feature. They are not "wrong", just
useless. We _are_ going to remember about those two variables.
Sincerely,
Luc.